Jack Carter leans forward, hands clasped on the desk in his campaign office, a smile creasing his bespectacled, 59-year-old face: "You thinks it's cool that I'm Jimmy Carter's son."
The statement floats in the air for a few seconds, followed by another quip, this one unaccompanied by a grin: "I'm semi-famous. That's the reason for the interest."
Carter is referring to recent whirlwind of interest from the media. Minutes ago, he was on the phone with a reporter from the Reno Gazette-Journal. Days earlier, on June 25, the New York Times ran a Q&A and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution carried a 1,647-word profile. Thirteen days before that, the Washington Post chronicled his courtship of MySpace.com-ers. Seven days prior, on June 6, the Tahoe Daily Tribune wrote of the Senate Democratic candidate's Northern Nevada trip to woo Republican voters. The Weekly even joined the fray last week, chatting up Carter's daughter, Sarah, about the modest success of her father's MySpace.com page.
This is what Carter hoped would happen when he decided in October to challenge Republican Sen. John Ensign. That people would look at his lineage—oldest son of America's 39th president; the only Carter kid (there are four) to follow pops into politics—and want to hear what he had to say. Call it kitsch value as a campaign tenet.
"If Michael Jordan ran for office, the name recognition attached to him would be phenomenal," Carter says. "People have an immediate sense of who I am because of my father. They're thinking that the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree."
Carter envisions the rest of the plan working like this: media interest dominoes into campaign donations—"The Carter name means I can tap into the good feelings many folks have toward my father," he says—which translates into voter support, carrying him to victory over Ensign.
"All I have to get is 51 percent of the vote, and I win," Carter says, chuckling.
Would that it were so easy. Far from the nearly invulnerable state institution that Democratic Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid has become, the slightly polarizing but seemingly well-liked Ensign is certainly no pushover.
If only because he's got oodles of cash (nearly $4 million compared to Carter's $1 million). If only because his party controls every branch of government on Capitol Hill. If only because he's generally been a good foot soldier for President Bush, sponsoring supportive if duplicitous legislation (2003's Opportunity For Every Child Act reinforces the right, granted by 2001's No Child Left Behind, of students to transfer to better performing schools). If only because he's been smart enough to buck the president on vote-currying issues like opposing the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain nuclear and arguing against redirecting to the federal government the millions Clark County receives through sales of federal land. If only because Ensign is buddy-buddy with Reid; they've become cool since he came within 428 votes of beating Reid in the 1998 Senate race. In fact, the thinking goes, Reid might be the only Democrat with the money and moxie to beat Ensign.
The odds seemed stacked against Carter. After Carter announced his candidacy in October, left-leaning blogger Hugh Jackson announced Carter's doom: "Yes, a Carter candidacy, reported as an all-but-done deal in the Review Journal Wednesday, has to be viewed as a genuine example of taking one for the team. No credible candidate was on the horizon—Harry Reid disgustingly and shamefully made sure of that— so Jack Carter will prop himself up in front of the Ensign inevitability train, and dutifully get run over."
A March 30 Wall Street Journal poll showed Ensign ahead 51 percent to 37 percent. Carter lost ground in a May Reno Gazette-Journal-News 4 poll of 600 voters across the state: 32 percent said they'd vote for him; 52 percent said they'd select Ensign. Political pundit Jon Ralston's assessment is bleaker: "Carter, who has been in Nevada less than four years, will get little help from the national Democrats [hello Harry Reid]. It's hard to envision this becoming a race. Period."
His prescription for a Carter triumph: "Pray for a scandal. Pray for a Megabucks win. Pray for a Democratic wave even he can surf." Ralston told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he'd think differently if Carter had $3 million. (His advice to Ensign: "Ignore Carter. Spend a lot of money on touchy-feely, feel-good TV spots. Hope the anti-GOP wave bypasses him.")
Precious little of the Carter coverage has taken a critical eye to his chances, preferring
Carter's heard the naysayers and, of course, disagrees: "I think that a Democrat with name recognition could effectively challenge any Republican anywhere."
Imbued with genteel south Georgia charm, steeled by work on his father's successful 1976 presidential campaign and blessed with an analytical mind (a career in the futures and trading markets), Carter says he's "not a normal kind of candidate." He's campaigning nationally for a local race. What other state Democrat could do that?
"The Carter name means I can raise money all over the country," he says.
He plans on using Carter the Elder closer to election time. What other Democrat can call on a father who used to be president?
And could any other Democratic candidate effectively court the crucial rural vote?
Bush won Nevada by 21,000 votes in 2004 on the strength of small, typically Republican towns outside Clark County. Carter's rural courtship is based on his premise that country people everywhere have the same sensibilities—a boy from rural Georgia peanut farm is no different than a miner from Ely. He says he's been well-received outside of Vegas.
"People in the country are as politically savvy as folks in the city," he says. "In a small town, you'll find many people you disagree with. But you can vote for people you disagree with, so long as you know they're good people and want to do what's right. The people in Elko haven't seen Ensign in three years."
Carter's reasons for running aren't revelatory. His frustrations generally mirror America's: mismanaged Iraq and Afghanistan wars; no-bid contracts; growing budget deficit; tax cuts for the rich; a disastrous Hurricane Katrina recovery effort; frayed relations with Iran and North Korea; an administration operating with Nixonian secrecy; sky-high gas prices. Citing a Congressional Quarterly report that Ensign supported Bush legislation 96 percent of the time over the last five years, Carter says it's time for him to go.
"He's basically a rubber stamp and Nevada needs someone independent," Carter says.
Last Wednesday, as candidates for state Assembly, Clark County recorder, District Court judge and sheriff mingled in a room at the Clark County Library, awaiting the start of the Seniors United candidates' day, Carter was in a room across the hall, schmoozing. One lady, from somewhere in the South, told of meeting his dad in New York. That day, the former president was an admirer. "He said he was so happy to meet someone from the South who talked like him," she says.
The second candidate to speak, Carter enters the room, stands in the back and jots notes as Las Vegas justice of the peace candidate Abbi Silver runs down her bona fides: prosecuted thousands of cases, incarcerated the Valley's most dangerous criminals, created jail programs to reduce recidivism. An impressive resume, actually.
Carter's turn.
Like everyone, he gets 10 minutes. Carter ping-pongs from topic to topic, dispassionately articulating his disgust at where America's headed. But he barely nicks Ensign. Unlike Silver, he can't run on his résumé—he's a novice. And where's the passion in his voice, the conviction in his cause, the chip on his shoulder?
In fairness, Seniors United's candidates' day is more of a candidates' mill: get up, state your bonafides, make room for the next person. Not necessarily the best place to gauge voter interest. Every candidate received the same mild applause from the nearly 30-person crowd. Even if Carter was debating Ensign, it's hard to envision his voice rising above its soft monotone.
But that's Carter. He's refined, not rah-rah. Everything about him exudes benevolence, perhaps due to his rural upbringing. Unfailingly polite, he seems incapable of anger. He's contemplative, too, analytical, thinks through answers. When pondering, he has a habit of interlocking his fingers and staring straight ahead. A born politician he's not.
After working in the family peanut business, Carter studied physics at Georgia Tech, dropped out (he'd finish later) and served in the Navy during Vietnam. Law school at the University of Georgia was followed by long financial career, mostly in the hedge-fund industry, marriage and children (four from two marriages). While living in Bermuda, Carter's wife, Elizabeth, came to Vegas and found a condo she liked in Summerlin. The couple moved here in 2002. Carter expects his relative newness to Nevada might be used against him.
"They might call me a carpetbagger who doesn't know the issues facing Nevada," he says. "Local issues aren't so complex. You don't have to live here long to understand we have water supply problems."
Raising money from business leaders has been tougher than expected. Ensign, they know. (They also know his father, former Mandalay Resort Group CEO Mike Ensign). Jimmy Carter—former president, Nobel Peace Prize, first-rate humanitarian—they know. Jack Carter, they don't.
Which could be a problem.
During a May visit to his offices on Desert Inn just west of Decatur, Carter said he'd need $3 million to win. From November to March, the campaign raised $620,000. By June, that figure jumped to $1 million. With the election five months away, he'd have to triple the November-to-March fund-raising output to reach that goal. Is this an impossible dream?
"I have good relations with people in almost every state in the union, and I can harness my business contacts," says Carter, who worked in the futures market for the Chicago Board of Trade and the currency market with Citibank before opening a business in Bermuda. "Once you get to a certain threshold, the money doesn't mean that much. It's fairly typical for Republicans to outspend Democrats two-to-one and three-to-one. I still anticipate winning the race. I didn't get into this to lose."
Back in the office a day after the speech to Seniors United, Carter is working—or being worked, it isn't clear—by the media.
"They call me, just like you did," he says. "My name gets people interested, just like you were. They want to see what I'm about. But I still have to stand on my own two feet and say the right things."
That's actually what Carter's campaign feels like—he's playing it safe. Welcome to the great Donkey Debate. How to approach the 2006 mid-term elections: go all Howard Dean attack dog (leftists would like that), embrace New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's calculatingly centrist approach (her pro-war stance has riled party faithful) or follow John Edwards (and Carter's) values-oriented tack.
Playing it safe could hurt Carter as much as help. If Ensign gets negative, will he? Can he? How will his stances on the issues—"nobody likes abortion, but most people are pro-choice"; "most everybody is for civil unions, but not gay marriage"; "we must set goals in Iraq and if they meet them, we'll stay longer, if not, we're leaving"—square with voters?
And what of his comment that "local issues aren't so complex?" If the issues weren't complex, we'd have concrete resolutions to controversies over Yucca Mountain, water (Southern Nevada wants to tap into wells in the north; northerners say no); Vegas getting stripped of some Homeland Security funding.
Jackson, the left-leaning blogger, predicted Carter would score points with Nevada Democrats—he hasn't—and position himself as a future state party "poohbah"—hard to fathom at this point.
Say he wins, but Democrats fail to overtake either the House or Senate, would a freshman senator from a politically neutered party be that much better of a representative than a head-nodding yes man? Questions only an election can decide.
One pundit on the left-leaning DailyKos web site describes the conditions surrounding Carter's run as a "perfect storm": A teetering Republican Party, an unpopular administration, low opinion of Congress. He's got a famous name, high-profile help and the ability to raise money. Had he committed earlier, he might be viewed as a serious contender by folks other than his backers and desperate Democrats.
Contemplating the perfect storm question, Carter leansback in his chair, fingers interlocked. No, this isn't a perfect scenario, he says, but he also wouldn't have run if things were all peachy-keen.
"I'm a Democrat because I'm for helping the average American family and not big business," he says. "Democrats talk about issues and not about values. I'm talking about bringing back core American values."